Programs to convert your photos into art

Well, not so straight forward, but still cool. I've been doing photo-artography (a term I thought I concocted on my own but others have tried to prove me wrong at other forums; lol) for over a decade now. Not going to tut my horn though; just going to share some cool programs for those that are interested.

The grand-daddy is actually a Microsoft created Photoshop plugin called Impressionist (that use to be shipped with Office 2000 Premium). Microsoft long ago abandoned this cool plugin. It even works in GIMP if you know the secret. Use to be able to get it at Trimoon's site (Asnailspace) but the site's been down for quite a while now; thanks to the wayback machine, the link to the file itself still apparently works:

Before DAP, there was Arcimbolder. The creator of Arcimbolder sold rights to Mediachance and Oscar created DAP. I just purchased the 64-bit DAP 4 upgrade (again, been using DAP for years to create paintings out of photos; my main push has been with creating object art using DAP (see this thread for details).

Postwork Shop Pro:

I still use this one often enough; great for certain effects but I'll let the website share those effects; yes, I still have the latest version:

Of course, I use many other programs/plugins and I would be admiss if I did not mention G'MIC. Another David (lol) created this gem and it's my main engine of inspiration. I use the GIMP plugin for this one.

I was just wondering because we have a big old oak sitting in a valley all by itself, half dead half alive and I think it would just be a blast if it looked photorealistic until one zoomed and all of a sudden the bark became wood ticks and the grass and leaves were nothing but aphids and grasshoppers. Or a simple picture of a stream, zoom in and it's all trout and bass and bullheads.

I've used AndreaMosaic in the past; seems like that defines photo-artography since it uses photos as the objects eh?

Yes, thanks. I see now that the images have to be absolutely humongous in order to keep the resolution good to excellent in both states; magnified and not. I hope Chris lets loose now and then instead of being socially conscious all the time.

Ooh, it all hurts my brain. Not being an artist, I would never be able to do anything like this, but it's certainly different. As F.U.N. says, don't forget a bit of humour sometimes, it helps to cope with the social conciousness aspect!

I just downloaded photosketcher in the hope that it will provide me with the ability to convert portraits into line art. I have tried just a few others and have not been completely satisfied, since the end product still produced too many lines. But, thank you very much for the suggetions.